Quantitative Auswertung von Dünnschicht-Chromatogrammen: On line-Kopplung mit programmierbaren elektronischen Tischrechnern

Reprocessing of spherical THTR fuel elements shall be tested in the Jülich pilot plant JUPITER. This fuel type differs significantly from other fuel elements with respect to shape, composition and fissile material content. It requests special provisions for reprocessing and the necessary material balancing and safeguarding. Two material balance areas (MBA) are defined: head end and chemical extraction process. Within the 1. MBA uranium and thorium are balanced mainly by using a combination of digital counting of the fuel spheres, gammaspectrometric burn-up determination of individual spheres and X-ray fluorescence determination of uranium and thorium in nitric acid solutions which have been obtained by dissolution in Thorex reagent of the heavy metal oxides after burning of the graphite matrix. The 2. MBA begins with the solution for the chemical extraction process, collected in the so called accountability tank. After extraction according to the Thorex flowsheet the process streams are monitored in line for process control, and off line for material balancing and safeguarding. This is performed mainly by X-ray fluorescence analysis, potentiometric titrations, alpha- and mass spectrometry.